


The More Things Stay

by Bexless



Category: Original Work, Snogging Emo Boys
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-30
Updated: 2011-07-30
Packaged: 2017-10-21 23:55:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/231303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bexless/pseuds/Bexless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written in 2005, after all of fandom watched That Snogging Emo Boys video. The videos seem to have disappeared from the internets, sadly, but this story remains! Random English teenage boys kissing and humping in the dark. \o?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The More Things Stay

**Author's Note:**

> P.S. 'Get off' means snogging, not orgasming. Thank you for your time :)

Everybody always ends up at Freya’s after they’ve been out on Friday nights, crashing out in their clothes and waking up feeling like shit the next day. No one ever remembers to bring a toothbrush, Freya’s dad always comes in to tell them to be quiet, Freya’s mum always offers everyone tea and toast the next morning and Aaron and James always end up sharing the futon on the floor of Freya’s bedroom.

Nothing ever changes.

The girls always end up piled on the bed together, and Tom always curls up in the beanbag chair near the door because he has this weird thing where he gets up at three in the morning and decides to walk home. He only lives four doors down, and Freya’s parents are used to finding the keys posted back through the letterbox, lying on the mat in the morning.

James, however, lives four *miles* away, and has no sense of direction and would probably get lost or mugged or picked up by the police for walking slowly or something. Besides which he left his keys at home and his mum does *not* take kindly to being woken up in the middle of the night.

All of which basically means – James can’t go home. Not until the window starts filtering grey into the room, and that won’t be for hours and if James could just get to *sleep* it might be okay but he can’t, not with Aaron lying next to him and the imprint of Aaron’s mouth still heavy on James’ lips.

It’s dark, like pitch-black dark, and James can’t see his own hand in front of his face when he waves it experimentally. It’s warm in the room, and quiet except for sleep-noises and breathing and Freya’s annoying pig clock that ticks. As if anyone has a clock that ticks, anymore.

Aaron’s lying on James’ left, like always, and he’s curled up facing James – James can tell by the knees pressed into his side and the steady in-out of Aaron’s breath against James’ ear.

So they’re lying close together. It doesn’t mean anything. Aaron always sleeps like that and James usually crashes out just quickly and annoys Aaron in the middle of the night by flinging his arm unexpectedly across the futon and catching Aaron’s nose with the back of his hand.

Nothing ever changes.

Aaron always mutters, “The fuck, dickhead,” and shoves James’ arm back onto James’ side of the futon, and James apparently makes an unintelligible noise that could be Sorry or Oops or Fuck You, and rolls over onto his stomach where he proceeds to drool all over the pillow. Aaron takes a stupid picture of James in the morning, and James takes the piss out of Aaron’s bed hair, and this is the way Friday nights always go, nothing ever changes unless someone decides to dare James and Aaron to get off with each other for two minutes and everything inside James’ head gets fucked up and shaken down and thrown out of order.

What the hell? James still doesn’t really understand what happened. One minute he’d been sitting around in Freya’s room, smoking out of the window and mouthing along to System of a Down, who James doesn’t really like but he feels like he ought to prove he knows all the words to their songs, anyway. Aaron was taking the piss out of Lindsey for snogging the old man DJ with the gammy eye, and Tom was on Freya’s computer looking up designs for his next tattoo and then all of a sudden there was a dare and a video camera and Tom saying, “Well it can’t be me, I’ve got a girlfriend. You and James’ll have to do it.”

“Er,” said James from his perch on the windowsill. “Excuse me, but shouldn’t I have a say in this?”

Lindsey went, “Nope” and scrambled off the bed, leaving Aaron lying back on his elbows, looking at James like he was challenging him to a duel or something.

“It doesn’t bother me,” he said, patting the bed next to him. “I’m secure in my sexuality and extremely familiar with the Kinsey Scale.”

James rolled his eyes and Freya threw a cushion at Aaron’s head. “Don’t Social Studies A’ level us.”

Aaron just grinned and patted the bed again. “What’s the matter, Jimbo? Don’t you want to kiss me?”

“Hello, no,” said James, but he got off the windowsill and went and lay down next to Aaron anyway. He wasn’t a chicken. And it wasn’t like he’d never kissed Aaron before, but no one else knew about that (he didn’t think, but Aaron had a big gob on him sometimes) and anyway, it was an accident.

Anyone could end up kissing their best mate if they were both stoned and it was raining and the best mate in question said, “Listen, can I, I just want to see if it’s...”

Plus, there were no tongues. It doesn’t count if there are no tongues. It’s like a rule. Thing.

Anyway, that’s how James ended up lying on Freya’s bed, with Aaron lying next to him, and Tom looming over the bed waving Freya’s dad’s video camera around.

“Two minutes,” said Lindsey, settling down on the other side of Aaron with a frankly scary smile on her face. “No more - ”

“Yeah, I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that,” said James, tugging his hat down further over his ears.

“No less,” said Freya, crouching down on James’ side of the bed.

“You’ll have to get closer,” Tom said, grinning like a maniac as he adjusted the viewfinder on the camera. “And none of this hands-on-the-side-of-your-face-with-your-thumb-in-your-mouth bollocks, either.”

Aaron’s arm was warm next to James’, and then it wasn’t because Aaron lifted himself up and swung his leg over the other side of James and okay, that was his thigh pressing against James’ dick as they both looked up at Tom and waited for him to say, “Go.”

James had time to think oh, bloody hell – and then Aaron’s mouth was on his and Aaron’s weight was pressing James down into Freya’s bedcovers. Aaron’s hand came up almost instantly on the side of James’ face, cradling it just like James had seen Aaron do when he was getting off with a girl, and then –

“Oi.”

James snaps his head to the side, yanked back to the present by Aaron’s quiet voice floating through the six inches of blackness between their faces.

“You okay?”

James shrugs, and then remembers Aaron can’t see him, so he murmurs, “Yeah. You?”

Aaron goes, “Mmm,” but he doesn’t sound sure about it, and he shifts, stretching out – James knows because the knees against his hip disappear and are replaced by toes poking his left foot. “Sorry.”

“S’all right.” James turns towards Aaron, tucking his left hand underneath his face. “Thought you were asleep.”

“Was.” Aaron’s watch beeps and flashes briefly green. James catches a glimpse of the edge of Aaron’s glasses and of Aaron’s hand, laid flat on the futon between them.

“You’ve still got your glasses on, though,” whispers James, feeling stupid but not knowing what else to say or how to stop himself from saying anything at all. It’s dark. Aaron - James was *kissing* Aaron, earlier, and there *was* tongue and Aaron took his T-shirt off and it’s dark and Aaron is right there and James doesn’t know what to do. “You don’t sleep with your glasses on.”

“You don’t sleep with your beanie on,” whispers Aaron, and suddenly there are clumsy fingers against James’ forehead and Aaron tugs lightly on the hat. “And yet.”

James grins, and turns his face into the pillow to hide it, and feels stupid again because it’s *dark*, no one can see. He’s very aware, all of a sudden, of Aaron’s jeans brushing against James’ combats, and of the like, heat coming off Aaron’s body and of Aaron’s fingers resting still against the side of James’ face. James reaches up and wraps his fingers blindly around Aaron’s wrist, pressing the beads on Aaron’s wristbands (only girls wear bracelets) into Aaron’s skin, wondering if he’s leaving little oval indentations and star-shaped marks.

Aaron shuffles a bit or something, James can’t see what he’s doing, and then he breathes, “Can I kiss you again?” and James kind of jerks his head back in surprise because he didn’t expect Aaron to be so close, for his voice to be so low, to be able to *feel* the words on his skin instead of just hearing them like normal.

Aaron draws back straight away, pulling at James’ hold on his wrist and hissing, “Sorry, sorry, don’t go mental, I just thought-“

“Er, I don’t.” James squeezes Aaron’s wrist, frantic, wanting him closer again, wanting to be as far away as he could possibly be, wanting Aaron to just, “Shut up a minute and let me think, yeah?”

Aaron subsides, flexing his wrist in James’ grip until James loosens his fingers. Aaron doesn’t pull his hand away, though, he just slides the back of his hand down into James’ and James closes his fingers again, feeling Aaron’s knuckles against his palm.

“Okay,” he whispers, hitching closer to Aaron. “Yeah. Okay.”

They miss, of course, because it’s fucking pitch black in the room and they bump chins and their lips don’t match and James is pretty sure he sticks his tongue up Aaron's nose at one point, but then it doesn’t matter because James gets his head tilted the right way and Aaron kind of slumps a bit and the angle changes and slides and it’s kissing, that’s all, just kissing like it is with anybody. It’s nice, it’s wet, and it gives James a fucking hard on faster than anything else in the world. He’d be embarrassed if he was with a girl but he’s not, he’s with Aaron, and Aaron’s a bloke, he knows how it is, right?

Aaron’s mouth is gentler than it was before, like he’s not so sure of himself now nobody’s looking, or maybe he just doesn’t feel the need to try so hard. His lips are soft and when he pulls back slightly and runs his tongue over James’ bottom lip James feels the whole room spin (okay, he sounds like a fucking girl, but there it is) and he squeezes Aaron’s hand, panicking a bit.

Aaron kind of goes, “Mmms’aallkay” and nudges James onto his back again, following James down and pressing him into the futon and it’s better, it’s like earlier. James is held tight between Aaron and the mattress and is pretty sure he isn’t just going to explode unexpectedly or float away or fly apart at the seams.

They’re still kissing. James usually gets lockjaw or bored (or worse, both) by now but this is good, Aaron’s mouth is wide like James’ and James isn’t constantly trying to work out how to use his tongue without dribbling everywhere. Aaron does this thing where he pulls back and the kisses are shallow, brief, time to breathe and then he presses forward again and sweeps his tongue deep into James’ mouth and James thanks God it *is* dark, because he’s pretty sure his eyes just rolled back in his head.

James’ arm feels weird, twisted up and squished flat between their bodies and he wiggles his fingers a bit, not wanting Aaron to think he’s trying to let go. Aaron gets it though (of course he does, if they can conduct entire conversations with their armpits they can do this) and he slides his hand out from between them. James wraps his newly-freed arm around Aaron’s back instead, wishing Aaron hadn’t put his hoodie back on because he liked the way Aaron’s skin felt under his T-shirt, before.

Then he thinks, oh, I could, and slides his hand down until he feels the wide ridged hem of the sweatshirt. It’s ridden up from Aaron’s jeans and there’s a gap between it and Aaron’s belt, which is cold and hard and James rests his hand on the (warm, smooth, which is weird, like a girl) exposed skin of Aaron’s back for a minute, breathing into Aaron’s kisses and waiting for the Up-Top Fear to pass.

 _(“Up-Top Fear,” Aaron said, closing the CD case and tossing it aside onto the bed in favour of accepting twos on James’ cigarette. “The moment of ‘aargh’ between positioning your hand at the edge of a bird’s top, and actually having the bollocks to stick it up there. It’s a well-documented psychological condition.”_

“Tard,” said James, but he knew what Aaron meant.)

Aaron’s hand comes back up around James’ face, sliding around to cup the back of his neck where his fingers slip under James’ hat and into his hair. It feels a bit weird, Aaron’s big hand wrapped around James’ jaw because James is used to being the one doing the wrapping, but it’s not a bad weird. Neither is Aaron’s hard chest pressing down against James’ front or his long narrow leg pushing in between James’ thighs.

“I haven’t got boobs,” James mutters when Aaron’s other hand slides over James’ chest for the sixth time.

Aaron breaks away and sniggers, dropping his forehead onto James’ neck and muffling his laughter by pushing his face into the thick cotton of James’ hoodie. “I know,” he whispers between giggles. “I don’t know why I keep doing that. I feel like a twat.”

James grins against Aaron’s hair. “You are a twat.”

Aaron laughs again and goes, “Shurrup” and slides his mouth over James’ cheek until he finds James’ mouth again and they just keep kissing for a bit, because they both know what they’re doing there, more or less.

It should be stranger than this, James thinks, to have his best mate’s tongue in his mouth, but it isn’t. James only starts to feel weird when the kissing stops, when one of them needs to breathe or they both break off, startled, when one of the girls makes a sudden sleep-sound and turns noisily over on the other side of the room.

James cranes his neck back and stares wildly and upside-down into the inky darkness, but Freya’s annoying clock ticks for a while and Aaron takes one, two, three four shaky drawn-out breaths against James’ cheek and it seems to be all right. No one leaps up and turns the lights on and points screaming at the two of them, anyway, which is what James was really afraid of.

Because – okay. Because, “We’re in Freya’s *room*!” James hisses, shoving at Aaron’s chest until he rolls off James and presses heavily into his side, instead. “Everyone’s here!”

“I know. I fucking know, man.” Aaron’s breathing kind of fast and it’s hot on James cheek and oh, for fuck’s sake, James can feel Aaron’s hard-on pressed against his hip.

“We can’t do this here,” says James, *not* paying attention to Aaron’s hard-on. Or his own, which feels like it must be making a fucking four-man tent out of his combats and he’s really, really glad it’s dark.

Aaron says, “Do what?”

“Eh?” James looks as hard as he can at Aaron. But he can’t make anything out except a vague charcoal variation, which may or may not be the outline of Aaron’s head. He boggles anyway, because if he’s looking at Aaron’s ear or the radiator or something, well, Aaron won’t be able to tell. “What do you mean do what?”

Aaron makes this funny little noise like a stifled whimper (James’ dick does not pulse in his boxers. It does *not*) and James can imagine the face he’s pulling, the same one he pulls in French when Mme. Martin asks him to decline a verb. “I mean, what are we *going* to do? As in like.” If James didn’t know better he’d say Aaron was shaking. “As in like, going further.”

“I don’t know, do I?”

“Neither do I.”

“Well you started it!” James wants to shoot himself. He thought Aaron knew what he was doing, at least. Aaron always knows what he’s doing. That’s how it *works*.

Aaron doesn’t reply, he just lies there breathing with his hand clenched in the front of James’ sweatshirt and his face pressed into James’ shoulder (and his dick pressed into James’ side, shut up shut up) and he really is shaking, but he can’t be cold, because James is boiling.

He must have taken his glasses off, because James can’t feel the frames.

James sighs and pushes his hand under his hat, scrubbing at his hair. He can’t think. It’s dark and it’s too hot and he’s so fucking hard he wouldn’t be able to see straight even if he could see anything at all. He shifts his hips a bit but that doesn’t help, and then he has a thought.

It’s dark, right? No one can see him. And Aaron apparently feels fine about the fact that James’ hip is extremely well acquainted with his cock, for fuck’s sake, so James feels all right about sliding his right hand between his legs and pressing his fingers down over his dick. At first the pressure, any pressure, makes his blood surge and his stomach twist and he has to bite his lip and concentrate really hard on not thrusting his hips up off the futon, but then the ache fades, dulled by James’ firm unmoving grip on himself and he blinks away the red spangles behind his eyelids, breathing steadily until he can trust himself to think.

He turns his head and manages not to jump when his nose brushes a part of Aaron’s face that might be his cheek or chin or forehead. “D’you want to stop?”

 _(“The problem with birds,” Aaron said, hopping up onto James’ kitchen counter and thumping his feet against the floor cupboard. “The problem with birds is that they always want to *stop*.”_

He sounded so indignant, and James grinned at the sandwich he was making. “Yeah, well, that’s how it works, ennit? They give, we demand, yeah?”

“But it’s not *fair*.” Aaron leaned over and pinched a slice of cucumber. “They haven’t got dicks. They don’t get hard-ons. They don’t know what it’s like to just *stop* and spend the next forty minutes in fucking agony, trying to explain to your penis *why* you can’t keep going until you come.”

James rolled his eyes as he hacked the sandwich into two halves with his mum’s steak knife. “Drama queen. It’s not that bad.“

“It *is*. And it’s all to make sure the girls keep the power.” Aaron hopped down again and picked up one half of the sandwich. “It’s a cockspiracy, is what it is.”

“If you say so.” James took a bite out of the other half and jerked his head towards the living room. “X-Box?”

“’Kay.”)

Aaron sighs and goes, “No, I’m not a girl,” and James grins, because he knows Aaron is remembering the same conversation. His fingers open and close on the front of James’ hoodie a few times. Restless. Edgy.

James knows the feeling.

Aaron sighs again and suddenly he moves his hand and James only has time to go, “Ack, no” and then it’s too late, Aaron’s hand is sliding down James’ arm and it stops at his wrist and Aaron goes still and then he laughs, kind of, and breathes, “You’re fucking groping yourself?” and James says, “Well, you try and make rational decisions when you’ve got a stiffy,” and Aaron kind of moans and it slides over James’ skin and he feels Aaron’s hand on the back of his own, feels Aaron’s fingers sliding between James’ and pressing their joined hands down harder onto James’ dick and Aaron is fucking grinding himself against James and going, “Oh, fuck, jesus, James” and it’s game over, you lose, James doesn’t care if the entire fucking school is watching because this, this, *this* is what the big fucking deal is, finally he understands.

James pushes up with his body and rolls Aaron onto his back, knocking Aaron’s hand out of the way and shoving his hips down against Aaron’s, shuddering at the firm, rough slide against his cock and only just remembering to push his mouth onto Aaron’s before he moans.

Aaron arches up and gives this kind of broken groan, both hands coming up to clutch at James’ shoulders and then snatching at his waist, pulling James down harder into every roll of his hips. James knows this, knows how to get everything he can from a session that involves two layers of fabric and a single bed.

He braces his arm on the futon (just like Aaron did earlier when everyone was watching, and *that* was not what James was expecting) and leans down harder with his hips, his cock fucking surging with every thrust and he shoves his tongue deeper into Aaron’s mouth to muffle the helpless noises they’re both making. Aaron’s hands push up under James’ T-shirt and move in frantic grabs and sweeps over James’ back, in time with the increasingly urgent push of his pelvis, up to meet James’ thrusts (thrusts, like sex, like this is actual *sex*, not getting off or snogging or messing about and James can kind of understand why girls want to stop before it gets to this point, because he’s fairly sure he’d be fucking terrified if he weren’t about three seconds from coming) and always coming back down to James’ hips, to his waist, to anything that’s going to give Aaron more of what he wants.

James knows, because that’s exactly what he does when he’s getting off with a girl.

Or a boy, apparently.

Aaron’s nails are digging into James’ back and he’s tense and desperate and James pushes up slightly and changes his angle, making it sharper and more exact and when he shoves his hips *down* Aaron rips his mouth away and gasps, “Oh, oh, fuck, fuck –“

“Sssh,” hisses James, but he knows Aaron can’t, so he leans back down and clamps his mouth over Aaron’s. He wishes he could hear it, wishes there was light so he could see, but he can’t and there isn’t so he just closes his eyes against the dark and *feels* Aaron falling apart. He feels Aaron crying out into James’ mouth and feeling his hands spasm on James’ back and his hips straining up so hard James has to shove back down with his own and feeling his whole body just fucking…convulse. James feels it too, feels it in the wave of tension that starts in his stomach and is followed by this rush of fucking unbelievable feeling. James would swear to God his spine is about to fucking melt or shoot out of his cock or something and his arm gives way and he shoves his face into Aaron’s throat and tries not to yell too loudly as everything peaks and tips over and James can’t do anything except press himself down onto Aaron’s body and shake and jerk and come.

For a while they just lie there, and James blinks and tries to breathe and hopes that everyone else really is asleep and not just pretending like that time Leah gave Tom a blowjob and Aaron sat up halfway through and yelled, “Get a fucking room, you perverts!”

“Nnnrgh,” goes Aaron, which James takes to mean, “Get off, you fat bastard” so he does, flopping back onto his side and wondering vaguely if this means he has to join the GLBT club at school.

 _(“Like they need to be in a club to prove they’re Here and Queer.” Aaron threw a disgusted look through the music room window and gave a two-finger salute to the rainbow-striped parade making its way towards the science block. “Just fucking be gay, you wankers, you don’t need a badge!”_

James picked clumsily at his bass guitar and shook his head. “Join and run for Club President if you feel so passionately about it.”

Aaron shrugged. “Maybe I will.” Then he mooned a group of unsuspecting first-years and James laughed so hard he fell off his chair.)

Aaron clears his throat and James kind of lolls his head towards the sound. “Dude, you *came* on me.”

James raises his eyebrows. “You came under me, what’s your point?”

Aaron makes a weird little sneezey noise, and then his shoulder starts shaking, and James panics for a minute until Aaron takes a huge gasp of breath and James realises he’s laughing, both hands clapped over his mouth if the muffled sounds are anything to go by.

James grins at the ceiling. “You’re such a freak.”

Aaron sputters and snorts a bit more, and then whispers, “That was some nice fucking work, man. I’m impressed.”

“I do my best.” James shifts, uncomfortably aware of the spunk cooling inside his boxers. “My boxers feel fucking gross.”

Aaron mmm’s a little in agreement. “Tell me about it.”

James lies still for a minute, wondering if he should be more freaked out by the fact that he just dry-humped his best friend.

“Nah,” says Aaron when James whispers his suspicions. “We’re emo, ennit. We’re supposed to be all tortured and faggotty.”

James snorts, and claps his hand over his mouth, and rolls onto his side, laughing.

“We are!” Aaron insists, and James can tell he’s smiling. “I read it in the Alternative Teenager’s Handbook. It’s in the chapter on the proper way to annoy chavs through the use of sexual ambiguity and eye liner.”

James laughs harder, and Aaron joins in, and they sort of forget they’re supposed to be quiet until a soft furry missile (one of Freya’s cuddly toys) collides with James’ head and from across the room, Lindsey complains, “Will you two shut the fuck up laughing? Some of us are trying to sleep.”

“Sorry,” they chorus, and everything’s quiet for a minute until Aaron breathes, “I wonder what she’d throw if she knew we’d been lying on her coat?” and James loses it, burying his face in the pillow and laughing and laughing until Freya wakes up and clicks her lamp on and everyone stares grumpily at the two of them, giggling like idiots in the middle of the night.

“Oi,” says Lindsey. “Are you two lying on my coat?”

Aaron laughs so hard he chokes, and James hits him on the back so he won’t die, and everyone makes such a fuss over the laughing and the coat and the time that James is pretty sure no one knows he was snogging Aaron senseless five minutes earlier. That thought sets him off again until he’s too weak with laughter and relief to do anything but like there grinning when Freya’s dad comes in to berate them all for making so much noise.

James is glad Aaron still looks like Aaron, now the light’s on. He doesn’t know what he was expecting, exactly, but he thought it might be different and, well, it isn’t. Aaron sort of shoves James with his elbow, and James thinks that Aaron is probably thinking the same thing.

Aaron picks his glasses up from wherever he put them and unfolds the arms, sliding them back onto his nose and blinking slightly at James. “Your hat came off.”

James puts his hand up to his head. Huh. “So did your glasses.”

They grin at each other.

“The fuck are you two going on about?” asks Tom, grumpily, getting up from his beanbag chair. “No, hang on. I don’t care. I’ll see you lot tomorrow, yeah?”

He stumbles out through the door to a chorus of sleepy goodbyes, and James looks at his watch before Tom hits the switch and plunges them all into darkness again.

Three o’ clock in the morning. Right on cue.

James turns onto his side – so does Aaron, they bump knees – and laughs once more before closing his eyes.

He’s drifting on the edge of sleep when Aaron says, “Oi,” again.

“Mm.”

Aaron shifts. “Don’t be weird with me tomorrow, yeah?”

James reaches out and shoves the first bit of Aaron he finds – shoulder, he thinks. “Don’t be a mong.”

Aaron smiles. James can’t see it, but he knows. “’Kay.”

James shoves him again for good measure and then gives himself over to the primal post-orgasm male urge to sleep. The last thing he’s conscious of is Aaron’s breathing smoothing out and regulating, and the thought that Friday nights at Freya’s are wicked, really, because even if you go through a massive life-changing event like oh, say, getting off with your best friend (twice, and in public even) you can still be sure that Freya’s dad will come in to tell you off for making too much noise and Tom will go home at three o’ clock in the morning.

Nothing really ever changes, does it? And that’s okay.


End file.
